Skip to main content
Dessert

Boiled Puddings

A sweet boiled pudding flavored with lemon, orange, brandy, white wine, and rum.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Boiled Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar and water. Bring to a boil and add lemon and orange rind.

  2. Simmer for 14 to 20 minutes.

  3. Stir in butter and flour until smooth.

  4. Remove from heat and add brandy, white wine, and rum.

  5. Add orange and lemon juice, stirring gently. Serve hot.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Brandy + rumtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. White wine + rumtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together113 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Brandy + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together620 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid so it becomes smooth and lightly bodied.
Rum
Adds aroma and warm, boozy flavour to the sauce.
Brandy
Adds aroma and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Orange juice
Adds acidity and fresh citrus flavour to balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter and flour until smooth. Flour needs to be fully dispersed in the hot liquid, or it forms lumps instead of thickening evenly. Stirring steadily while the mixture is hot helps the starch hydrate and the butter emulsify into a smooth sauce.

Swap the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon, butter, flour, brandy, white wine, rum):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Pineapplefits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon, butter, flour, brandy, white wine, rum. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes